ABSTRACT
For Jacques Lacan, the infant does not start out with an organised sense of its body, but starts to develop these both through its own perception and by means of the gaze of the other (usually the mother) upon it; the body-image thus developed forms the keystone of the infant’s imaginary world. The optical model shows how little access the subject has to the reality of its own body. Instead, the body is a surface to be written upon. If the unconscious is structured like a language, then the body functions as the writing-pad. For the infant, “there is no dichotomy of body and mind, but a single, undifferentiated experience of sucking and phantasising.” In Lacan the mother, as first other, invests the body of the child by demanding and desiring certain things. In this way, the child becomes aware of its body and of the Other’s desire, which becomes “his” or “her” desire.
